


harbors of our own

by tidelinear



Category: The Strange Case of Starship Iris (Podcast)
Genre: Episode Tag: 2x02, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:34:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28849917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tidelinear/pseuds/tidelinear
Summary: Arkady frets.
Relationships: Violet Liu/Arkady Patel
Comments: 12
Kudos: 29





	harbors of our own

The _Iris II_ has dedicated first mate’s quarters and even in the low light, its walls gleam, silvery bright and clean. It makes Arkady’s stomach turn, but she can run diagnostics on the whole ship from here, hunched over on her mattress in the closest to dark it’s possible to get on a functioning ship. She’d turned off the redwood forest projection. 

She runs the peripheral tests first — alarms armed; dust level minimal; charging ports operational; temperature exactly the same in every room of the ship, even the engine room. The _Rumor’s_ engine room had always run warm, a side effect of a ship cobbled together with the sheer force of Sana’s will and panels that weren’t always adequately insulated.

Higher temperatures would probably help Brian. She should tell — 

_If you keep being exactly that person, I don’t know if —_

She moves on to the engine diagnostic. The ship’s computer reports one successful check after another. She’ll go over the physical engine later, again. It’s unlikely that she missed something from her last inspection but it’s unlikely she’ll sleep tonight, so why not triple check. Her vision blurs unexpectedly as the test concludes and she has to blink hard to get it back. 

Arkady exhales short and sharp, and makes herself picture Brian as she saw him an hour ago, a weak thumbs up and soft words for Krejjh, who was still a sickly lavender when Arkady left the medbay to look over the engine. Brian’s fine. They’re all going to keep him that way. 

Brian’s fine. Arkady will make sure the ship is fine while he recovers and Violet looks after him and Krejjh keeps him company and Sana tries to get Thasia on the line and Park tries to contact to Other Violet and even McCabe had pulled out a encyclopedia from who-knows-where and started researching respiratory diseases. 

It had just been Arkady standing around uselessly, having failed in her job to be the first line of defence.

Having failed at a lot of things today. She can still see the set of Violet’s jaw, mouth turned down unhappily; she can still hear Violet walking away from her, echoing louder and louder in her ears. It takes a second for the sound to filter, molasses slow, through to her brain and she leaps up, heart pounding as the adrenaline spikes. 

Arkady fumbles for the switch and the door slides open to Violet against the door jamb.

“Hey.”

Arkady almost chokes on nothing. She’s not proud of it. “Liu!” Get a grip, she begs herself. “Hi. Hey.” 

Violet’s mouth twitches upward in the barest approximation of a smile. A purely reflexive action; she can’t imagine Violet’s particularly happy to see Arkady right now. She pushes past Arkady, kicking off her shoes more haphazardly than Arkady’s ever seen, beelining towards the tablet blinking on Arkady’s bed. 

“Brian’s not worse,” Violet says, briefly inspecting the printout. From across the room, Arkady can see a confirmation of a successful diagnostic test. Violet places the tablet gently on the nightstand and cracks her jaw in a massive yawn.

Exhaustion weighs down Violet’s eyelids, and Arkady finds herself stepping closer before she can second-guess herself. Violet watches Arkady inch forward, but doesn’t try to stop her; just looks steadily at Arkady, almost pouting the way she does when she’s exhausted and keeping herself awake through resolve alone. Her hair hangs mostly over her shoulders, having fallen out or been pulled out of its usual ponytail.

“He’s also not better,” Violet continues, “but the captain ordered a minimum of four hours of sleep and some positivity.”

“Sounds like our fearless leader, all right,” Arkady manages.

This morning, Violet might have walked into Arkady’s arms and exhaled into Arkady’s neck like she was letting go of every ounce of weight on her back and trusted Arkady to hold her up. Tonight, Violet stands on the other end of Arkady’s room, leaning against the nightstand instead.

Christ, she doesn’t know how to do this. She wishes anyone else was here, wishes she could steal the words Violet needs and regurgitate them until the clock spun backwards and Violet was showing her the forest projection again, before Arkady opened her mouth and tried to explain that some people just had tougher lives, that was all. Maybe child soldiers shouldn’t exist, but Arkady was one, and she can’t regret it.

“Arkady?”

Violet’s eyes have shifted from tired to concerned. 

“Yeah, hey, what’s up?’

“Are you coming to bed?”

Arkady hits a mental blank so hard she feels herself careen off it before she can force out, “Bed?”

“Minimum four hours?”

“I’m — I thought Sana said that to you. For you. She send you to find me?”

“She didn’t send me. I came because I wanted — ” Violet licks her lips, and Arkady watches her shoulders rise with the force of her inhale. “I wanted to — I don’t think I want to be without you right now.”

Violet’s eyes are pleading and dark and Arkady can’t breathe right when Violet does this, when Violet’s brave for both of them. 

“I thought you were mad,” Arkady says weakly. Her arms are tingling, sharp stinging bursts down her shoulders all the way to the tips of her fingers.

“I’m not mad _at_ —” Violet runs a hand through her hair and seems to realize it’s all but escaped her ponytail. She scrapes it back brusquely and Arkady wants to stop her, wants to gather up the silky smooth strands and sweep them back herself, wants Violet at her feet, head tipped back between Arkady’s knees and eyes half-lidded as Arkady runs her fingers through Violet’s hair. Maybe she’ll finally learn how to braid.

“Can we do this tomorrow? Please? I’m just — I’m tired and scared and I know I look like death warmed over, I just. Tomorrow. We do need to talk. But tomorrow.”

She wants to call Violet _baby._ She wants to wrap her up in her arms and press her face to her hair and murmur promises she doesn’t know how to keep.

_Try. Asshole._

“Yeah,” through numb lips. Arkady clears her throat. “Yeah. Liu. We can do that.”

Violet exhales, turns on her heel, and collapses onto Arkady’s bed. She lays with her head half on the pillows, her knees almost touching the floor, with the air of someone who has done too much today and won't be moved. It occurs to Arkady that Violet didn’t so much beeline to her tablet as she did the bed itself.

It’s this thought that propels her across the room. She cajoles Violet further onto the bed, swinging her ankles up from the floor and under the crinkly Regime-issued blanket that came with every cabin onboard the ship. When scrambles onto bed herself, Violet immediately turns into her and Arkady pulls her close, has to, tucking her chin over Violet’s head.

Violet’s nose is cold. Arkady palms the back of Violet’s head and — carefully, gently — presses her closer, until Violet is rubbing her nose against Arkady’s collar and giggling just a little at the feeling, a warm exhale of a laugh as she squirms even closer, legs tangling with Arkady’s under the blanket.

“Okay?” she mumbles, a hot wash of breath that sends shivers down Arkady’s spine. 

Arkady holds her tighter, swallowing hard against the smile Violet presses to her neck. “Yeah. Sleep, okay?”

“You too,” Violet insists, considerate to the last, and Arkady gives into temptation and places a lingering kiss on Violet’s head. The promises she makes are silent, but with Violet’s breath slow and even against her, they don’t seem so impossible to learn to keep. At the very least, Arkady is going to try.


End file.
